The What, Why and How of Software Security

Quite a few web applications encrypt query string values. This is generally done as an added measure to prevent unauthorized access. Since the end user cannot chose a value and then encrypt it, changing parameters becomes difficult. But encryption is Read More...

Modern symmetric block encryption algorithms need to satisfy a number of properties to be considered strong. One such property is the property of “Confusion”. What it means is that if an attacker is conducting an exhaustive key search, and if the key Read More...

This is nothing new, but I just wanted to document it on my blog. Block ciphers encrypt data in blocks of bits. These blocks are generally 64 or 128 bits long. In the ECB (or Electronic Code Book) mode, each block is encrypted independently of the other Read More...

The concept of perfect secrecy is that given the cipher text, and any resources and amount of time, the adversary has no way of getting to the plain text. Having the cipher text makes no difference and provides absolutely no additional information. The Read More...